


the cherry street murder house

by kokiri



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Growing Up, Haunted Houses, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 08:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12908073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokiri/pseuds/kokiri
Summary: five stupid boys vs. one ambiguously haunted house.





	the cherry street murder house

**Author's Note:**

> h...ello! :') i've been thinking about doing a fic like this for a while. if you're not an author's notes type person please feel free to skip on to the story. but if you are... this story is really special! there are a lot of aspects of my life, my childhood, my hometown, myself, and beloved friends in this story. the house that they sneak in to is a real house ([take a look!](https://twitter.com/silvites/status/937195618153332736)) and when i was a stupid teenager i made it as far as the cellar before i got too scared and peaced out. 
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> i think the only things that require any actual type of warning are: that jaemin has a bit of internalized negativity in regards to his mental health and at one point his narration uses the word "crazy" - this is merely supposed to be a reflection of how jaemin, who is young and isolated from most of his peers, views himself and is obviously not the way i view people with mental illness (because, lol. well.) and while it is a comment made in passing, i would hate for anyone to be upset by any possible implications. and there is obviously some talk of murder, violence, demons, etc. due to the nature of the plot. i'm from the south and we can be a very gossipy and superstitious people, lol - and so are the boys featured in this story. oh and this isn't a warning as much as a general note, but i guess i've been a little liberal with the ages of the characters to justify them all being peers in the same high school. i mean. it's fic. 
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> as i am currently working all of this into a little verse based on my childhood/high school days, you may see some references to events or other characters that crop up organically but lack full explanation or context. since there will be more installments involving these characters, they will likely be explained at another time. if anything is confusing or you have any questions about this verse, please let me know! i would be happy to answer. 
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> and finally... you may notice that this fic lacks a pairing tag. that's because i want the focus to be on... Friendship and Growing Up, which doesn't always involve being in a relationship! those that have read my fic "stargazing season" will be a bit familiar with the dynamics of jaehyun, doyoung, and ten already. i know that shipping and our OTPs are more often than not the centerpiece of any good fic, but i hope this fic that can reach the hearts of the people who read it despite not being heavy on the romance. 
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> i'll shut up now. please enjoy. 
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> oh, one last thing. haechan mentions that he lives in a holler. holler ("hollow" with an accent) is the common word for a valley region between two large hills or mountains where people in the south often live. the roads are normally perilous, winding, and sometimes unpaved. you usually get no cell reception back in a holler. i grew up in one.

The high school being located right on the highway didn’t offer the student body much as far as pleasant scenery. But being in that kind of old, forgotten small town, the sights presented to them have an intrigue that will likely come back to haunt them all once they are grown and gone.  And for now, they will lament that there is nothing to see, nothing to do. Only one fast-food restaurant that doesn’t stay open any later than nine, even on a Saturday. A single stoplight that doesn’t work half of the time. And it’s very ugly, and very boring, and doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.  

Then there is Jaemin.

Jaemin has found himself growing into a peculiar brand of existential horror. While his classmates chat about homework and extracurriculars while waiting for the buses to pull around the front, his eyes are locked on the house that sits across the highway, right off the tiny, gravel road that the school bus takes to transport the children that live on that side of the mountains.

The Cherry Street Murder House has been known as such for as long as he has lived in this town and the story and timeframe of its last occupation varies depending on who you ask. His mother told him once she heard it has been abandoned since the 50s, and Jaemin would believe it. Besides some minor renovations to the exterior, the home has remained mostly unchanged for what seems like a millennium.

Jaemin knows it’s an exciting game for the local kids to sneak in and go exploring. Right in the heart of October, with the excitement of Halloween buzzing around, it’s a pretty common topic of conversation lately.

“You’re always starin’ at the murder house lately.”

Donghyuck knows of Jaemin’s nervous disposition and that he is liable to just about die at the sudden sound of another voice, so Jaemin can appreciate that Donghyuck talks to him softly, like he’s telling some big secret. It startles him a bit nonetheless, but he calms down quickly enough.

“Have you ever gone in there?” Jaemin asks.

“No,” Donghyuck replies. “I almost did, but I chickened out last minute. But Jisung paid Mark a hundred bucks to stay there overnight, apparently.”

Jaemin stares at Donghyuck, waiting for him to continue with the story of Mark’s hauntedness. How that time Mark was out for about three weeks was _actually_ because he was getting exorcized and not because he had mono.

“He said it was no big deal,” Donghyuck concludes. “Anyway. You wanna go?”

Their bus pulls around. Jaemin and Donghyuck board last as their conversation made dawdlers out of them while the rest of the kids lined up in anticipation of the bloodthirsty battle for the good seats in the back. They sit down together in the very front. Jaemin doesn’t mind so much since some of the kids like to trip him on his way up whenever he sits in the back.

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” Jaemin says.

“It’s not about getting in trouble. No one’s ever gotten in trouble before that I know of. If you really want to go inside, I’ll… go with you?” Donghyuck offers. “I’ve always wanted to go. I was too scared last time, but this time, I think I’ll be okay. Don’t you think you need a little adventure in your life, Jaemin? You’re gonna die from boredom one day if you keep living like you do.”

Jaemin has never thought about it like that before. No, he figures, he doesn’t need adventure in his life. He can’t separate adventure from instability and chaos, and he had enough of all that the first few years of life. Now life’s okay, it’s stable, and he’s not about to mess that up by inviting some demonic entity to ride home on his back and wreak havoc on his quiet life with his mother.

“It’s not… so much about adventure. It just kind of freaks me out thinking people lived there, and died there, and the house is just rotting from the inside before our very eyes. And in ten years, the stories about it will become even more vague, it’ll probably still be empty… Like… the world keeps turning… you know?” It all sounds pretty stupid if Jaemin is being honest, but it’s how he feels.

Donghyuck nods understandingly. Maybe it isn’t as stupid as Jaemin thinks.

“I got ya, Jaemin. You live up there in that fancy house of yours, sealed away from the world, and you’re lookin’ for, uh… what’s it called, you know the word we learned in English class? The _an-ti-the-sis._ ”

“An-ti-the-sis,” Jaemin says quietly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“So how about this Saturday, at about noon… Ride your bike to the murder house and I’ll be there waiting for you. Okay? And we’ll find your an-ti-the-sis for you.”

The bus hits Jaemin’s stop first today. He nods at Donghyuck and wishes him farewell, standing up and throwing his backpack over his shoulder. It’s a long walk to his home from the mouth of the driveway. Stately, immaculate, his own personal hell. That kind of house that looks and feels unlived in, even though they have been living there for years and will be for years more to come. 

 Jaemin wishes he could be anywhere but here.

 

 

 

 

Sitting in the stretch of unkempt grass that separates the highway from the parallel gravel road on which everyone’s famous haunted house sits, Jaemin feels like he has crossed over to the other side. But the other side of what, exactly, he isn’t sure. Every time a car passes by, the driver waves at them, even if they aren’t acquainted, and that is the metric Jaemin uses to measure his current level of actually existing.

“I heard if you go up in the attic there’s a murder ledger and a photo album of all the victims,” Donghyuck says, picking at all the dandelions they crushed underfoot.

“I heard that photo album is just some pictures of a family no one remembers,” Jaemin says, not sure which is scarier. Some depraved small-town killer versus fading into oblivion, never to be remembered again. It’s certainly the former, but Jaemin’s not ready to accept a world where he doesn’t even exist in thought or memory.

“Well, in any case. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll hop the fence and go ‘round back. The cellar door is unlocked – I checked the other day.”

“You came here by yourself?!” Jaemin asks. Donghyuck nods like it’s no big deal.

“But don’t worry. I didn’t do any exploring without you. Just wanted to make sure we had a clear entrance and exit route.”

The two of them stand up, wipe the dirt from their pants, and briskly cross the road. Traffic is always pretty clear on this particular road at this particular time of day, but they don’t want to get in the way of some redneck speeding in his beat-up old truck down the one road the local police never pay any mind to. Enough of their friends have gotten into accidents here to scare them nearly to death over it.

The seam of Jaemin’s front pocket gets caught on the fence as he’s climbing over. He curses quietly under his breath, knowing his mother is going to be angry at him when she sees.

“I can stitch that up,” Donghyuck says. “We’ll go to my house later. It’s just down the road. In the holler.”

“The holler? That’ll take forever!” Jaemin says. But he isn’t about to go home with ripped britches and face the quiet ire of his mother, so it’s a journey he must undertake. It probably won’t be so bad since he has his bike.

They wade through the overgrown grass around to the back of the home and observe the old cellar door. The door knob is loose and the door is beginning to hang off its hinges. Despite the house’s vacancy, there is an owner who has tended to the siding and door at the front. But he must assume that no one has the guts to come in through the rear or else he wouldn’t leave it precariously vulnerable to mischievous kids and the occasional squatter.

“I’m scared,” Jaemin says, “so just hurry and open it fast.”

Donghyuck obliges without any hesitation. When he does, a horror of brown and black flies outward from the cellar and causes Jaemin to promptly fall back on his ass.

“What the fuck?!” he gasps, hand over his racing heart.

“Probably a bat,” Donghyuck says, seeming pretty unbothered.

“A bat,” Jaemin repeats, so bothered he can’t even stand it. He rises to his feet and dusts himself off. “I don’t wanna go anymore. I changed my mind.”

Donghyuck looks at him disapprovingly. Jaemin is not in the business to be scolded for being reasonably scared of their town’s local murder house.

“Look, Jaemin. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make ‘im drink. You wanted to come here, I brought you here. But I can’t make you do anything you don’t wanna do. And… you’re a little bit of a baby. I get it.”

Jaemin isn’t even going to argue with that. It’s true – it’s just fucking true, Jaemin is a baby! That’s probably why he’s been in therapy since he was six. Probably why he wakes up in a heartbroken panic from nightmares where his mom is trapped in their burning house and he can’t save her no matter how hard he tries. Probably why his English class mercilessly laughed at him when they caught wind of him crying over that book where the girl falls in the river and dies and her friend has to face the concepts of mortality and grief and where the _fuck_ do we go after we die, anyway? Definitely why he doesn’t want to step foot in this cursed house no matter much his morbid curiosity has him wanting to know what death and dilapidation really look like, smell like.

But he looks at Donghyuck. Donghyuck does not and has never cared that Jaemin is their school’s resident crazy boy. Donghyuck sat with him on the school bus and showed him a dream analysis book he found in the library and told him shit like, “It’s normal. It’s completely normal,” even when he didn’t have to. And Donghyuck didn’t laugh at him that day in English class.

Donghyuck doesn’t care that Jaemin is a baby. So Jaemin at least owes it to Donghyuck to not waste his time.

“Okay,” Jaemin says, after a heavy, thoughtful silence, “fine. But if I die… I’m absolutely haunting the shit out of you. I just want you to be aware of that.”

 

 

 

 

Truth be told, it isn’t so bad. But the deeper truth beneath _that_ truth is that Jaemin is mostly just scared of the attic where the rumored photo album of the brutally deceased is said to be. Passing through the foyer doesn't bother Jaemin too much until he notes what looked like blood stains on the floor. They do not spend too much time analyzing them and Donghyuck quickly remarks that it is probably spilled paint from the owner’s previous half-baked attempts at renovation.  

The kitchen is mostly just dusty, not scary, and there is not much to see. The bedrooms upstairs give him more of an aching feeling of sadness than just being outright terrified, probably since they are the most intimate locations in the home. There is still furniture in most of them, but it certainly doesn’t look like it is from the 50s, or the 20s, or the late 1800s. It almost looks kind of… modern. But still caked in dust and grime, still haunted in its own right.

“I heard that a man killed his wife here in 1983 or something like that,” Donghyuck says. “My dad told me that, but he’s always lying about stuff, so…”

“Oh. I think I heard something about that, too! But I thought they meant that old brick mansion up the road, you know the one?” That would explain the relatively modern nature of all the furniture in the bedrooms. It both lessens and strengthens Jaemin’s fear and anxiety to have a somewhat concrete idea of what happened within these walls. But that really could just be an old urban legend. There’s so many of them around these parts, so many old, broken down houses on which the locals can fixate. Stories confused with old horror movies, stories made up by kids to scare each other, your average, small town ghost stories that make their way into the public consciousness of a town that doesn’t have much else going on.

“Yeah, that one’s just haunted with the souls of the Confederate soldiers that died there when it was a hospital during the Civil War,” Donghyuck says. “Same nice old couple has lived there for years. It’s definitely this house that’s the murder house.”

They’re standing below the attic door, that type that’s pulled down with a string to reveal a ladder. Donghyuck reaches up and pulls it down, bringing down a cloud of filth along with it. Jaemin coughs and waves his hand in front of his face. Donghyuck sneezes so many times his eyes start watering, and they both laugh at each other a little bit.

“I’m not gonna be the first one up there,” Jaemin says as if that isn’t already obvious.

Donghyuck sighs. “Fine, then,” he says, and he begins climbing the ladder. Jaemin skittishly follows him.

The attic is empty, for the most part. There are a couple of splintered wooden chairs and some stacks of old newspaper against the wall. Jaemin figures there’s a treasure trove of local history in those pages and almost wishes he had the time to sit down and read through every single one of them. Right in the center of the room Jaemin spots them – the photo albums. They sit down and pick one up.

“Just family pictures,” Donghyuck says. “It’s the same people in all of them.” He flips open a few of the other books. “And look. No murder ledger.”

Jaemin heaves a sigh of relief, almost feels like there’s some weight just sliding off his shoulders. He feels oddly satisfied with himself for sticking through it. Like an itch has been scratched. He is about to suggest to Donghyuck that it’s time for them to head home when he hears voices coming from downstairs.

“Oh… shit,” Donghyuck whispers.

“Shit… fuck! Donghyuck,” Jaemin says. “It’s probably the owner. And some workers or something. What do we do? Do we jump out the window and run?”

“We will _die_ , you fool _._ We just gotta sneak out. It’s a big enough house. Okay? Can I trust you to not freak out?”

Jaemin nods silently because his voice is stuck in his throat, because he’s fucking terrified and doesn’t want to go to jail at the tender age of sixteen. The voices sound like they are coming from pretty deep in the house, hopefully wherever they are will give Donghyuck and Jaemin access to either the front door or the kitchen where they will be able to escape through the cellar. Otherwise, they’re screwed.

They leave the attic and close the door behind them as silently as they can, which is not very. Then they take refuge in one of the bedrooms before proceeding.

“All I’m saying is just… listen for the voices, avoid the voices, and then run. You got me, Jaemin?”

“Yes,” Jaemin squeaks.

“It’ll be okay. Let’s go.” Donghyuck grabs Jaemin’s hand and pulls him along behind him. Jaemin doesn’t even have the emotional capacity to feel embarrassed or confused or anything right now, just squeezes Donghyuck’s hand with every ounce of strength he has. Everything is going well for approximately thirty seconds until they hear some footsteps stomping up the stairs.

“Oh my God…” Donghyuck whispers, and is that a hint of fear in his voice? He pulls Jaemin into the nearest room, a study with an ugly old desk and a bunch of empty bookshelves. A quick ocular assessment of the room indicates that there is what appears to be a small closet that is blocked off by a large chair. “Listen. I’m going to quietly move this chair. And then we are going to hide in this closet until these people leave.”

“Sure,” Jaemin says, mind completely dissociated from his body.

“Okay,” Donghyuck says. He pushes the chair with only a small fraction of his strength, wincing at the sound of the legs scraping across the old hardwood floor. There’s now a crack in the door big enough for a wiry teenage boy to fit into.

“ _What the fuck? Hey, guys! Come up here, this room is totally haunted!”_

Shit! Donghyuck immediately squeezes into the closet and sticks his arm out, gesturing Jaemin over towards him and whispering for him to hurry the fuck up.

Jaemin means to sprint, but his sweater gets caught on the splitting, dry rotted edge of the desk, so hard that it pierces right through the fabric and leaves him nearly incapacitated. He tugs with all his might and at every possible angle until he frees himself, tripping over his own feet towards the closet. Only he doesn’t quite make it there before the door to the study opens and he is faced with his imminent doom. He screams bloody murder as a pair of skinny arms pull him into a chokehold.

And Jaemin accepts the fact that is his untimely demise. Aged sixteen, illegally trespassing on haunted grounds, Jaemin will die a stupid criminal. All he can do is sigh. So it goes.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! comments and kudos are always appreciated. the second chapter will be from The Other Perspective. i mulled over how to format this fic for a while and i am hoping it reads well this way. ;u; thank you!!!
> 
> [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/silvites) !!!


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